


Where The Heart Thrives

by Inlovewitthemoney



Category: Grand Army ( TV 2020 ), The Halcyon (TV)
Genre: Crossover, Denial of Feelings, Hiding in Plain Sight, M/M, Period-Typical Racism, Sid is sort of shy, Slow Burn, Time Travel, Victor is upfront
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-11-29
Updated: 2020-11-29
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:28:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27773824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Inlovewitthemoney/pseuds/Inlovewitthemoney
Summary: Suddenly uncomfortable Sid inches his hand towards Victors hoping for some comfort, just an inch of familiarity but, Victor snatches his hand away and castes a furtive glance in the opposite direction effectively avoiding the hurt looks from his boyfriend.The message couldn’t have been clearer.‘ Don’t touch my hand!’Sid clenches his jaw tightly and barely holds back a startled flinch before he stuffs his now clammy hand back in his pocket. He feels rejected, fearful, he feels how he’d felt before him and Victor had gotten together.... Ashamed.“ Sorry.” Sid murmurs dejectedlyVictor doesn’t look directly at him, but his next words are so plain that Sid knows he can’t be adressing anyone but him.“ It’s not the time.” Victor tells him quickly “ We’ll talk about it later.”Victors posture is tense, unwelcoming and by the darting of his eyes he’s scared, perhaps even terrified.  His jaw is set and his breathing is labored, he sounds as if he thinks anyone of them might be his last.
Relationships: Emma Garland/Freddie Hamilton (The Halcyon), Sid Pakam/Victor Borin, Siddhartha Pakam|Sid/Victor Borin, Toby Hamilton/Adil Joshi
Kudos: 3





	Where The Heart Thrives

**Author's Note:**

> This work is a time travel Au that takes place after the first season

Sid breaths through the harsh New York cold and pushes on, his feet propelling against the ground faster than he can process, Victor’s curly hair and perfect posture stands out amongst the sea of strangers. 

His breath is smoking up the air as his steps hasten but he embraces the tender familiarity. 

“ Hey,” He calls out tentatively, and Victors head whips around to look right at him, a telling furrow in his brow and the upturn of his eyes lets Sid know exactly what he’s thinking. 

“ I’m glad your here,” it reads and Sid can’t help but to think the same thing. 

Victor stands up and pulls Sid into a gentle embrace, his arms surrounding him and holding him up and the shorter boy can’t help but to sink into it, his head resting on the puff of Victors coat. 

The taller boy smells just like Sid remembers like Polar Ice gum and fresh rain, he smells exactly the same, the same as he’d dreamt of. The smell makes Sid feel dizzy and unfocused, its utterly addictive and yet calming at the same time. 

It has been months... Months since him and Victor have spent any real time together, since they’ve seen each-other. 

The coronavirus had struck the city with such vigor that everyone was doomed to stay inside on a mandated lockdown. FaceTime calls and text messages could only do so much for a longing heart, for Sid’s longing heart. There were only so many shows you could watch before you ran out, and only so many times you could do the same insane puzzle before you were driven mad. 

Sid had been staring at his four walls for so long that he started thinking they were moving, though it might have been the Narnia books he’d read 10 times over. Meera had told him that he could borrow one of hers but he’d declined, he’d rather the imaginary world or Narnia then a teenage girls angst filled musings. 

Everything had happened so quickly, the lockdown, school ending, but Victor had done his best to keep Sid encouraged, though it hadn’t made the Indian boy feel any less devastated, if anything he‘d gotten worse. With careful observation Victor had soon learned that Isolation definitely wasn’t Sid’s friend, so he’d invited him out. 

The governor had said it was okay for people to come out so they’d made plans. The restaurant had been Victors idea, Sid had just gone along with for the sake of seeing his boyfriend. In hindsight he’s regretting it now that he has no idea where he is. 

Victor lets go of him and they both turn to face the diner. It’s not exactly what Sid was  
“ expecting” but then again he doesn’t know if he “expects” anything quite yet. 

The outside of the diner is worn. The sign is still up and glowing but that’s about it, the paint is peeling off the building, and the color is faded so all in all it looks worse for wear. 

Victor looks happy about them being here though, if the unwavering expression of excitement on Vic’s face is anything to go by. Apparently this is what this place is supposed to look like. 

Victor takes Sid’s hand and leads them both through the door, his strides slow and sure. Sid forces himself to relax and breath out a sigh of relief, if Victors comfortable he might as well make an effort. 

The blonde haired boy leads them over to a booth in the far corner, which is good enough Sid supposes. He doesn’t mind sitting in the corner, it just means that they have privacy, more than most. 

Their booth is neon green just like the rest of them, there’s no variety there but, the light peaks through the open blinds just right so he supposes it could be worse. 

They sit on opposite sides of the booth and silently read through the menu’s, the silence isn’t uncomfortable but it isn’t quite what Sid wants either. 

They hadn’t spoken to each-other in person in months, but it felt like an eternity. 

Sid opens his mouth to speak but quickly closes it again. What can he say? What should he say? There isn’t very much to talk about these days, unless you want to discuss how your plans for college are possibly ruined. 

Sid inwardly scolds himself, he hadn’t come all this way just to sit in silence, so why can’t he just talk! They had spent months doing it over the phone so why can’t he do it in person! 

Sid almost flinches when he feels as hand clutch his, a familiar hand rubbing comforting circles into his skin. 

“ Hey-” That gets his attention, he looks up, up into those eyes- they’re so blue, they’re a cross between teal and olympic and he thinks maybe he’ll get lost. He’d dreamed about them all the time during the quarantine but the color was never just right, he could never figure out what he was missing he supposes it could have been the slight azure hue that grazes the edges or it could be- 

“ Sid!” Sid finally snaps out of it and lets his brain process the fact that Victor is sitting in-front of him, in a booth, in public, purposefully holding his hand. He’s here, with his boyfriend and he’s no longer hiding. It’s something about Victor that makes him open, happy, and open to suggestion. He makes him extremely happy. Its probably the positivity that he omits or the warmth in his eyes, but as of right now Sid can’t quite place it. 

His menu is set to the side and his gaze is solely on Sid, “ You okay?” 

Vic’s eyebrows are furrowed now and Sid supposes he thinks he did something wrong. 

“ I’m fine, just nervous.” 

The blonde laughs nervously and shakes his head “ We can leave and go somewhere else if you want, I know it probably wasn’t what you were expecting.” 

Sid looks around at his surroundings once again, it isn’t so bad, there are other customers here and it seems to be a quite busy place. There’s a jukebox in the corner next to their booth and it would be cool if they tried it later, he’s never seen a jukebox in person before. 

“ No, “ Sid declines “ I want to stay, I’m just having some trouble choosing what I want” 

What is probably a kind smile grazes the blue eyed boys features and he nods in understanding. “ I think I can help with that, I was overwhelmed the first time I came here too.” 

Sid looks down at their still joined hands and clutches Victors tighter, slightly afraid that this is all a fever dream, that him and the other boy couldn’t possibly be on a date right now. 

“ When was the first time?” 

“ What?” 

Sid sets his own menu aside to have better focus on the topic at hand, his eyes zeroing in on the pancakes with waffles before his left hand leaves the laminated pages. 

“ The first time you were here,” 

Victors features fill with understanding as they again make eye contact. “ Oh, I came here for the first time with my dad when I was ten. It was after a dentist appointment, I remember because I couldn’t decide what I wanted and he told me to “ Opt for the blueberry pancakes Vic.” “ 

Sid smiles at the shared memory happy to hear any story about Victors life, it seems that he doesn’t talk about his family much. 

“ You don’t really talk about your dad.” 

Victor nods in acknowledgement, “ Yeah, thats because he rarely talks about me these days, sometimes he acts as if I don’t exist, and others he acknowledges me totally.” 

“ That must be hard.” 

Victor just shrugs,” I don’t know if its that he’s busy with work or if its because I’m-“ 

Victor doesn’t finish the sentence but he doesn’t have too, Sid had picked up on it before. Like in his bedroom when they were doing the stimulus project for science class, or when they had met in the news room and Victor had said “ I know it can...” when he’d though that Sid’s dad was unsupportive and he’d never finished his sentence. From all of that Sid could guess that Victor and his dad no longer had a close relationship, if they’d ever had one to begin with. 

Sid clears his throat, before changing the subject, hopefully to something less touchy and upsetting, “So what’s good on the menu?” 

Victor grins and points to the chicken and waffles on his own menu. “ I don’t know man, I haven’t been here since I was ten,” Sid laughs at that. “ You can’t go wrong with Chicken and waffles right?” 

Sid nods in agreement. “ Right.” 

“ You want a coke?” 

Sids eyes widen in amusement and surprise. Had Victor just asked him if he wanted a Coca cola at 10 o’clock in the morning? 

“ What?” 

“ To drink,” Victor replied shrugging and looking as unbothered as always, his blue eyes filled with slight confusion. 

Sid laughs, eyes filled with mirth and shakes his head in denial, the mask slightly restricting his smile but at this point he could care less, this was the most amusement that he’d had in a long time. 

“ A Coke? At 10 in the morning?” Sid wheezes out between laughs. 

Victor tilts his head to the side and sets down his menu, his focus now back on Sid. 

“ Yeah.... so?” 

Sid’s eyes widen and if the situation wasn’t funny before it sure is now, a grin is now plastered on his face that he isn’t sure will ever come off. 

“ Victor, its 10 o’clock in the morning and you want us to drink coke with our chicken and waffles.” 

“ I always do that.” Victor admits with a head tilt to the side and a far off look in his eyes. He must be recollecting something and from the slight frown lines the memory isn’t quite pleasant. 

With a relenting sigh Sid gives in, maybe having a coke at 10 in the morning would be the bit of liquid courage he needs. 

“ Okay Victor, we’ll have coke, at 10 in the morning.” 

Victor grins at that and slides from the table, his taller frame towering over their booth. ” Okay, I’m going to go up to the counter and put in our order.” 

Sid nods in acknowledgement and makes his way over to the nearby jukebox, his eyes immediately attracted to the multicolored flashings of the machine and the bubblers. The jukebox itself is eye catching, there is an array of buttons and you can see inside the box where the disks are located. It looks like a record player on the interior. 

Sid almost jumps out of his skin when a hand is suddenly placed on his shoulder. 

“ You can play 3 songs for a quarter .” 

The shorter boy glances behind him at his boyfriend and grins. “ I wouldn’t know what to play.” 

Victor just shrugs and holds out a quarter, “ Just pick a random number.” 

Sid takes the quarter and turns back to the machine, he inserts the coin and presses the numbers 77 for luck. The record comes forward and places itself on the turntable in the interior. There are a few seconds before an unfamiliar song rings out through the diner. 

How glad the many millions of Annabelles and Lillians  
Would be to capture me  
But you had such persistence, you wore down my resistance  
I fell and it was swell

Sid hand clutches at Victor’s clothes as a sudden wave of nausea hits him, followed by a dizzy spell. His vision blurs as him and Victor cling to each other like soaked stranded dogs in a flood. 

Now that Sid’s vision is clearing he can see that Victor doesn’t look so good himself he’s just as disoriented as him if not worse. Sickness is not a good look on him. 

Their surroundings look different somehow in a way that Sid just can’t describe. The room is just spinning so fast that he can’t get a grip on anything in his vision. Sid can barely keep a falling Victor in his arms before he himself passes out. 

I'm your big and brave and handsome Romeo  
How I won you I shall never never know  
It's not that I’m attractive  
But, oh, my heart grew active  
When you came into view

I've got a crush on you, sweetie pie  
All the day and night-time hear me sigh  
I never had the least notion that  
I could fall with so much emotion

Could you coo, could you care  
For a cunning cottage we could share  
The world will pardon my mush  
'Cause I have got a crush on you

Could you coo, could you care  
For a cunning cottage  
That we could share  
The world will pardon my mush  
'Cause I have got a crush, my baby, on you


End file.
